Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/std_unix/volume.19/text0022.txt

Internet Message Format | 1990-05-17 | 1.1 KB

From: Maarten Litmaath <uunet!cs.vu.nl!maart>

In article <[e-mail]>,
    [e-mail] (Karl Heuer) writes:
)...
)Proposal: Reserve $\ (dollar-backslash) as a new entity that begins a C-like
)escape, so we would have $\a $\b $\t $\n $\v $\f $\r, octal escapes like
)$\177, and hex escapes like $\x7F.
)
)Alternative proposal (from a suggestion by Eric Gisin, [e-mail]): make a
)new string quoting mechanism, $"...", which is just like "..." except that, in
)addition to the four current backslash escapes \$ \` \" \\ that are permitted
)inside double quotes, all the C-like escapes \a etc. would be recognized.

Good idea!
But why not allow *both* syntaxes?  The first would be a simple form of
the second:

    $\a
equals
    $"\a"

...just like:

    $foo
and
    ${foo}

When you only want a single control character, you'd use the first form,
when you want some escape codes in a row (possibly containing `normal'
characters as well), you'd use the second form.
--
 1) Will 4.5BSD have wait5()?         |Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam:
 2) Sleep(3) should be sleep(2) again.|[e-mail], uunet!mcsun!botter!maart

Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 23